All About Thrush

What is it?

Thrush is caused by a yeast called ‘Candida Albicans’ and is also known as also known as ‘yeast infection’, ‘candida’, or ‘monilia’.

How you get it

Your skin, including your vagina and penis, and inside your mouth may normally have a mixture of different bugs including yeasts living there and causing you no trouble. However sometimes these yeasts start multiplying and make that part of the skin where they are – penis, vagina, mouth – very itchy. A very common reason for this happening is when you take antibiotics which kill of some of the normal bacteria on your skin and because these are killed off it allows the yeasts to grow (yeasts are not normally killed off by antibiotics). People with diabetes are also more likely to get thrush because the yeasts like the sugar that is in the urine of people with diabetes.

So you can see from this that you don’t need to have sex in order to get thrush! But it can also happen as a result of having sex.

What goes wrong

Your penis or vagina gets really itchy and sore. A woman’s discharges go lumpy like cottage cheese.

It’s very common and easy to sort out.

What to do

If there is any risk that you got this by having sex - see your Doctor as you ought to get checked out for other sexually transmitted infections.

If it is the first time you think that you have thrush - go to the Doctor to check out that that is what it is.

If it's not the first time, and you know what it is, then go to the pharmacist and buy a cream. Canesten is the most popular. If it doesn’t clear up after a few days, go and see your doctor. He or she won’t tell anyone else – not even your mum. Sometimes girls need to use a special sort of tablet called a ‘pessary’ which she puts into her vagina, or a tablet that needs to be swallowed.

If it keeps coming back, try to avoid nylon undies and tight trousers – just to keep the temperature down there nice and cool.